Friday, December 21, 2007

Lotus Cafe Mural


I'll be sharing some photos I've taken since I got my Canon Powershot S3 IS last July. This one's a mural on the back of the Hotel Lotus in downtown Portland. It faces a parking lot, so it's pretty visible. I think it's about ten years old.

I've been pretty pleased with the camera. It replaced an aging Kodak DC265 that was nine years old and tended to make large red areas come out in bright magenta. Ever see a P51 Mustang with a pink nose? I last used the Kodak at Faerieworlds in mid-July and took a lot of pictures, and after color-correcting all of them, I realized I could get better results with a more up-to-date camera. The two official photographers at Faerieworlds, Pixie of Pixie Vision Productions, and Kyer Wiltshire (photo below from Faerieworlds using old camera) both use Canons, so I was drawn to the brand, plus I liked what I read about the model I chose from looking over reviews on the Internet.


I don't know how often I'll be adding photos. This time of year in Portland isn't the greatest for pictures, but I did get a fair amount shot at a couple of Renaissance Faires, the Portland Pirate Festival, the Oregon Zoo and Mt. St. Helens, plus other shots around the city. So for a while at least I should be able to share several per week.

I added Powell's links to my Spider Robinson pages on Have Pun Will Travel. It's a bit of a pain to do it because Website Tonight doesn't cooperate with me putting the graphic on a page in Dreamweaver and then importing the page. I have to add the graphic in the WT application online and link them there. Also, I have to play with the HTML code in order to get the Powell's pages to open in a new window. I thought using Website Tonight would make things a bit simpler, and maybe it does, but it also makes things a lot more limited. Web pages are 800 pixels wide, period. That's not bad for simple stuff like The Punnery section of the site, which is just about 100% text, but for anything with much in the way of graphics, it's clunky. But I wanted to get something going quickly instead of digging into the ins and outs of web design and all that. I was afraid if I put it off while I learned more, I might not get started. So in that sense, WT is working out. I do have some pages that I uploaded directly to the website, such as my stories and the Anguish Languish "Night Before Christmas" pages. But now, for some reason, I can't seem to connect to upload any more stuff. I'll have to check it out. I did get my router back in service, so that may be part of the problem, or maybe I used a different FTP client when I uploaded, although I don't think so.

Oh well, it's been a strange day. I got through mid-afternoon before I realized it wasn't Saturday. That would explain why when I went to Saturday Market, which has been open all week for Christmas shopping, the place wasn't jammed with people.

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